For quite a while, now, I’ve wanted a good home music server. More than something to house mp3s/etc., I hoped for something that could handle online radio stations, podcasts, a local music library and the like. However, I also wanted the ability to stream synced audio in as many rooms or devices as I might like. If possible, inviting others to queue songs - and maybe add music/sources/etc. - would’ve been amazing.
Commercial offerings exist, of course. They’re often not cheap and often come with subscriptions, too, so even owning the hardware, if I tired of the service…
Enter Lyrion Music Server (LMS), originally designed for Slim Devices’ (later acquired by Logitech) Squeezeboxes, but that hardware platform ended in 2010. The service remained through 2024, though, and continues on as a self-hosted project, LMS.
There are still hardware options but I am currently focusing on a hosted container and various clients (web UI on the server, for my main desktop, then Squeezer on Android).
I stood up a container to run LMS, populated it with the Mucho Queso Collection (20 Richard Cheese albums) and had a great time. I’ve added a bunch of plugins - a scrobbler, Pandora, playlist manipulation plugins, and many more - but right out of the box, if you install a client, point it to the server, it just works. Add another client elsewhere, audio syncs by default (though clients can be removed from syncing).
All in all, I’m very happy. I think I need to audit the plugins I have installed (a number of the ones for streaming services require non-free accounts) but so far, so good!